[dhutton]

Originally Posted by LStathas

The price of the manifold shouldn't be any more than any other aftermarket intake. The price should be dictated by the cost of manufacturing and tooling just like any other intake, or any product for that matter. But the price of tooling is a fixed number and not more than making the tooling for any other intake. The price of an NOS or original unit is not a good argument nor is the quality of the casting. It is greed driven and just another example of our screwed up profit driven mentality these days.

Volume manufactured is a huge driver of cost. The more you build of something the lower the cost. I can’t imagine they are making very many of these manifolds compared to a more widely used SBC manifold for example....

Don

[mgarblik]

Originally Posted by dhutton

Volume manufactured is a huge driver of cost. The more you build of something the lower the cost. I can’t imagine they are making very many of these manifolds compared to a more widely used SBC manifold for example....

Don

Agree number of units sold drives the cost to some extent. My contention is simple. If YOU know the production will be very limited, and YOU know the quality of the casting will be suspect, and YOU know the pattern makers, cores, and core boxes will be second rate. Then for God's sake make the damn part with enough material in it to repair all the problems that WILL be in the final casting. Don't essentially produce a throw away part that stands no chance of even working, let alone working properly without hundreds of dollars of welding required to fill in all the mistakes. And on top of that charge top dollar for it and pretend it is an EXACT duplicate of a factory part. I can fix one of these manifolds and make it usable. But for a customer, it's going to cost them the manifold and $600.00-750.00 to weld the top of all the ports, fill and move the runners so they align, surface the mounting surface and weld up and re-drill all the mounting holes. Talking 2-3 days of work to fix.

[dhutton]

Originally Posted by mgarblik

Agree number of units sold drives the cost to some extent. My contention is simple. If YOU know the production will be very limited, and YOU know the quality of the casting will be suspect, and YOU know the pattern makers, cores, and core boxes will be second rate. Then for God's sake make the damn part with enough material in it to repair all the problems that WILL be in the final casting. Don't essentially produce a throw away part that stands no chance of even working, let alone working properly without hundreds of dollars of welding required to fill in all the mistakes. And on top of that charge top dollar for it and pretend it is an EXACT duplicate of a factory part. I can fix one of these manifolds and make it usable. But for a customer, it's going to cost them the manifold and $600.00-750.00 to weld the top of all the ports, fill and move the runners so they align, surface the mounting surface and weld up and re-drill all the mounting holes. Talking 2-3 days of work to fix.

My comment was not directed at you, hence my quote. I get what you are saying....

Volume is a huge factor in cost but shouldn’t drive quality. Although it is hard to make a business case for top quality tooling etc when the volume is low without further increasing part cost.

Don

[mgarblik]

My anger is not directed at you either dhutton. The whole episode was just frustrating. I did my best to try and talk the guy out of buying the manifold to begin with. But he "just had to have it". Then he is all upset when it is a complete pile of crap and not usable without spending twice what he paid for it to fix the new part. Nobody seems to be happy when the "Parts Place" is involved. It's a little unnerving that PY/Ames is selling some of their stuff in their catalog. I hope someone test fits and verifies every part before they catalog it.